


Fresh Limb

by join_the_conga



Category: DCU (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Eldritch, M/M, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:22:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26693659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/join_the_conga/pseuds/join_the_conga
Summary: Wet thuds echo in his memory admist claps of enemy gunfire. Wilhelm screams of henchmen thrown or, if especially unfortunate, speared straight through by… appendages, red and wet and flailing but still in the seeming control of the Red Hood. They had come out of his back, after all.
Relationships: Bizarro (DCU)/Jason Todd
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16
Collections: DCU Rarepair Exchange 2020





	Fresh Limb

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pinepickled](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pinepickled/gifts).



> Thank you to pinepickled for the fun rarepair prompts. Hope you enjoy!

Nightwing is black and blue even underneath the suit as he paces behind a gargoylish stone relic, one with bat ears and cape, staring through white lenses at the cave’s computer display kept grim and bright with the fresh gore of crime scene photos. The Bat’s back is rigid, pricked like a cat scrambling through the window of a haunted house, glaring, growling before the hiss at a stalking attacker. But Batman is steadfast and ignores Dick’s pacing, choosing to click and type away in the hopes that his protestor will leave.

Dick strikes like a diving raptor and brushes past the Bat’s shoulder to cue up the monitor’s sleep mode. Bruce does not swipe Dick’s meddling hand away. He allows Dick to spin the desk chair around by the headrest. Grunts, takes in the young man’s aggressive stance.

“You can’t leave him like this forever, Bruce!” Dick has taken off his mask. Bruce studies the red agitation around his eldest’s eyes. Hasty. Adhesive remover ignored for dramatic effect, or, more likely, some combination of theater and anger.

Bruce picks at words like he is julienning a chili—carefully, mindful of the heat. “We have had this conversation before, Dick.”

Looking more Nightwing than son, Dick almost shivers in rage. Bruce leans back in his chair.

“No! You have unilaterally decided his fate ever since he came back to Gotham… like this. And you’ve ignored every other person’s ideas on how to deal, how to give him his life back!” Dick throws the carbon fiber gauntlets he had torn from his arms a minute earlier. They crash past Bruce’s head, knocking over a coffee cup that shatters on the cave’s cold stone floor. Bruce is seemingly serene beneath the mask. Jaw clenched but otherwise unflinching. The mask, the gauntlets, the mug—it is all a classic display of performed rage. Bruce will wait it out. 

Dick silently crosses his arms at the lack of response and starts pacing again, close and fencing Batman in with a held, steady glare that moves as the rest of him does. Like a child, perhaps, a sullen teen vamping to build guilt or shame. Bruce remains aloof, steepling his hands like a thoughtful Freud. He watches Dick slow. Plant his feet.

Quieter, maintaining eye contact, Dick says, “We can help him through it, Bruce. He doesn’t have to stay in there, locked up like some monster.”

And there is the appeal to softer emotions. Dick is cycling through the oft-tread argument quicker than usual. “I don’t want to treat him as a monster,” Bruce concedes. “But he is unpredictable in his condition. Dangerous.”

Dick scoffs, drawing in breath to argue further. Easy for him to do so. After all, he hadn’t been there that night at the docks.

Wet thuds echo in his memory admist claps of enemy gunfire. Wilhelm screams of henchmen thrown or, if especially unfortunate, speared straight through by… appendages, red and wet and flailing but still in the seeming control of the Red Hood. They had come out of his back, after all. In between the darkened shipping containers, lit only from posts above whose lightbulbs were struck out one by one in nightmarish sequence as Black Mask’s men had tried to run in terror, Bruce had made out the horror and gore and its perpetrator’s newest weapons. Organic this time, no blades or projectiles or firearms. Wet. Cold. Vicious. 

Bruce remembers most the sound slop of crunching bones and tearing meat in those brief seconds he had stood still, trying to comprehend. Jason’s eyes had been black with monstrous glee. Though that had faded once his energy had gone. 

Confused teal eyes had met the white lenses of the cowl. They both stood shocked in the gushing, red row of dented, metal containers. “Bruce?” Jason had whispered. “What… what…” And then he had stumbled in surprise when Batman hit him with a sedative dart, tentacles twitching and writhing in protest before everything had gone slack. Bruce had collected the pile of his son from the ground. Had brought him back to the cave and taken blood and tissue samples for study within the half-hour. Had learned absolutely nothing of value since that night that would help him fix his son.

Batman and Nightwing stare at each other. For several moments. Neither of them giving ground. 

“It is best he is contained,” Bruce says.

Then Batman leans into his chair’s rotation, swiveling to put his back to the hunch-shouldered jungle cat on the needless hunt. Batman restarts his display and begins browsing through the evidence Gotham PD had sent over on a string of killings in Newtown. Professional wet work, but to what end? Victims not yet connected, though he is still waiting on Bat-level background checks for the two latest—

Batman is not so distracted or threatened as to jump when Nightwing’s fist comes down on the desk near the computer’s cursor. Anger. Theater. Desperation. Bruce turns his head away from the strike.

“Bruce—” Dick hisses. He raises his fist to slam it down again, this time on the keyboard. Before he does, they both jump up on unsteady feet as the cave rattles with a large, echoing thud.

Bats rustle around, scream their high-pitched warnings as they break off from the cave walls to rush out through hidden crevices toward the open nighttime sky. 

Another thud, this time more of a crash as columns and stalactites crumble at the western mouth of the cave. The subsequent shiver in the rock makes Batman brace himself against the computer desk, bolted to the floor

“What the hell is that,” Dicks mutters. Slaps his mask back on and grabs his escrima, which whir with an eerie, electric-blue light. 

Bruce rushes to the vault. Punches in the code to retrieve the green K even before he turns back to the computer to pull up the video feed over the west gate. In the monitor, a dark-haired figure in red and blue pulls back a log of an arm, a mit of a fist, to slam into the cave’s walls from the outside.

Dick takes a breath. Says, “Clark? But… Why the hell would Superman break in—”

A final explosion of rock reveals a hole to the stars over Gotham. Their intruder floats inside amidst the settling dust, red cape trailing behind him.

“Me am not Superman.”

Nightwing straightens slightly in surprise. Opens his mouth to speak, but looks quickly at Bruce out of the corner of his eye. Notices Batman’s fist, gripped tight around a Kryponite batarang. Shakes his head so small. Don’t.

Batman stands his ground while the clone floats closer some half dozen feet off the ground. His pale, eerie skin is more obvious now, in the dim light of the cave. His eyes flicker with a dangerous blue light. 

“Red Him am here. He leave with Bizarro.”

Dick straightens fully. He doesn’t stow his escrima, but his stance is loose, placating. Bruce tightens his grip on the glowing green weapon. 

“You’re right,” Dick says to Bizarro, “Jason is here—”

“Red Hood is staying here. I suggest you leave. Immediately.”

Dick scoffs. Says “Are you serious, B?” to the shaved ice statue that is the Batman.

Bizarro grunts and eyes the Kryptonite. Looks around the cave for a moment. Immediately picks out the cells and the one that Jason is contained in, even with the steel-reinforced walls in the way. Says nothing as he ignores the other cave occupants and begins to glide over to Jason’s cell.

Batman looses the batarang. It’s caught by Bizarro’s white, straining fist too fast for the eye to track.

Bizarro loses a foot of altitude. Turns away from Batman and Nightwing to curl in seeming pain over his hand clutching at the Kryptonite. Bruce hums in satisfaction and begins to approach, a second green batarang at the ready. Nightwing follows, tries to dart ahead. “What the fuck, B? You could seriously hurt him—”

Batman suddenly stops, grabs Nightwing by the shoulder to stop him moving forward. Bizarro has straightened. Has turned around with a smirk on his face, still white in pallor but flushed with delight. “Don’t make me laugh,” he says to the startled duo.

He raises the green K batarang in his hand with a sign of thanks. One moment it’s there, the next there’s a crack of heat in the air as it’s thrown with pinpoint accuracy to bolt Batman’s cape to the floor. Batman uses the cape’s quick release to get free, but not fast enough to beat the Kryptonian clone to the front of Jason’s cell.

Bizarro bears his teeth, screams as he stabs his hands through the cell wall, strains, rips a hole clean through. Dick, who had begun to chase, backpedals as Bizarro throws large chunks of concrete and steel plating in their direction. Batman and Nightwing take cover behind the blast-proof Batmobile.

“I thought Superman himself tested those cell walls?” Dick calls to Bruce.

“He did,” Bruce gets out from between his teeth. Screams in his head about being so stupid as to not consider a Bizarro clone’s total opposition to the Man of Steel himself. “It’s the green K. It’s giving him—”

A particularly large piece of rebar stabs its way like a javelin through the side paneling of the Batmobile, its twisted end reappearing through the car mere inches from both of their faces.

But that’s not the truly alarming part of this moment. Because, in the dark, cracked monitors of the cave’s computer, Bruce can see the tips of red, sentient tendrils slowly kissing the stricken wall, exploring their way through the rough and newly opened cell.

“Jason,” Bizzaro breathes out. Doesn’t hesitate to offer an arm toward the tentacles, lets them curl around his forearm and bicep to help lift their smaller, gasping host from the wreckage of his prison. 

“Jason,” Dick breathes out, too, seeing for the first time the new form of the Red Hood from his view crouched behind the Batmobile.

Bruce flips over the car and begins to run toward the scene. It’s futile, against a Kryptonian and a new eldritch horror. He is flung, none too gently, through the door of an open adjacent cell. He rolls to his feet. Dashes toward the exit when the door suddenly shuts and seals before him.

This cell is built for non-meta detainees. It’s made with bulletproof glass. Which means Batman has a good view of Nightwing, who stands at the computer with the cell door controls. He looks conflicted, even after he’s made his decision.

“Open the door,” Batman says. “Open the door! Do not let them out of this cave, Nightwing!”

“Biz?” a weak voice croaks. Bruce can’t help but look, can’t help but watch Jason and his swirling tentacles pulled up and into Bizarro’s embrace a few small feet above the ground. 

Bizarro cups the whole side of Jason’s head with one big, gentle hand. “I am so glad you are safe,” he says. He presses his pale lips to Jason’s brow.

Nightwing breathes out. Clearly, there’s a lot they don’t know about Bizarro.

“You shouldn’t have c-come here,” Jason says. The new appendages betray him, squirming tight and needy around Bizarro’s arms, shoulders, and waist. “You don’t n-need to deal with… This. With m-me.”

Bruce glares. Slams his fist against the glass. “Nightwing!”

Bizarro coaxes Jason’s gaze away from the captured Bat. His large thumb strokes Jason’s jaw. Pets Jason’s lip. Bizarro studies him closely, far more focused and sharp than a Superman clone is supposed to be. Says to Jason, “When we first met, I was in a cage.” 

Jason takes a wet breath. Mutters, “That’s not fair.” Still kisses the pad of Bizarro’s thumb.

Bizarro hums in contentment, even with a few of the tentacles now dragging against the back of his scalp, tugging desperately at his thick, dark hair. Jason’s actual hands are curled into Bizarro’s chest.

“I was in that cage for several reasons. First, because my owner thought me a weapon to be sharpened. And then because, in the cage, I would learn my place as an attack animal, let loose from its quarters only to kill. But the main reason I was left in that cage, Jason, was because the humans were afraid of me. Of what I would do if I could not be controlled.”

Jason whimpers as Bizarro strokes a tentacle, using the hand that had been cradling Jason’s head to smooth a palm over the branching appendages gripping Bizarro’s neck and shoulder. Bruce slams against the door again, then begins searching his belt for a solution out.

Bizarro ignores Batman. “This is all new for you, Jason. Fresh sensation that you do not know how to process, how to cope with, how to think through. But you had talked me through that same trauma of unnatural birth. You alone had not feared me. Had not treated me like a monster.”

Jason shivers in the agony of sensation, watches overwhelmed as one of his tentacles pets at Bizarro’s cheek and forehead. “D-dammit,” he hisses. “Th-they tried to get—get you with the green…k-K, huh? You’re… ’specially eloqu—loquent right n-now.”

Bizarro laughs. Leans forward to finally lick Jason’s mouth open in a deep, deprived kiss. Nightwing coughs as the tentacles shudder in pleasure, the ropes of feelers at Bizarro’s waist migrating to cross over the thick blue thighs instead. Batman blows a small explosive puttied at the door’s hinges. It doesn’t budge.

Bizarro pulls back. “Yes, you will not win a war of words right now. Deal with it.” Jason chases him to bite at Bizarro’s lip in censure. 

But then Jason leans back. Closes his eyes. “It’s like the p-pits again,” he admits. “I thought I was done f-fighting with the Lazarus rage. But with these—these things, they… It’s the pits all over again. I c-can’t control them.”

Bizarro shakes his head. “You can’t control them right now. That doesn’t mean you never will. And the answer to learning that control isn’t to stay in the cage.”

Jason huffs. “God, it’s l-like. Arguing with a fortune cookie sh-shaped like a… linebacker.”

Another small explosion at the door to Batman’s cage draws their attention. A tiny, but there, crack has begun to form.

“Jason,” Nightwing calls out. “It’s now or never.”

Jason bites his lip, looks at Bizarro, torn. “Like the pits. It c-could be… years before…”

Bizarro finally glides down, places Jason firm on his feet on the cave floor. “You know you cannot hurt me, Jason. You know you can learn to control it. Be brave. Come with me.”

Jason’s attention is pulled back to the glass door of Batman’s temporary prison. Bruce, who had been slamming a batarang into the vulnerable crack, pauses to look back. His son’s eyes are teal. The tentacles are calm, stroking down Bizarro’s back without thought.

“For what it’s worth,” Dick says from across the room, “I believe in you, Jason.”

Jason tears his attention away from Bruce to look at his so-called brother.

Dick shrugs. “Just sayin.’”

There is a moment of silence. Even Batman stalls his escape attempt to wait for this final decision.

Jason turns back to Bruce again. Stares him down.Sniffs, and then steps back into Bizarro’s embrace. “Get us out of here, big guy.”

Bizarro kisses him again, hungry. And then, in seconds, they are gone. It is only Nightwing and Batman, yet again.

Dick rubs the back of his neck from the prison cell interface. “I’m just gonna…” He points to the Nightcycle and is out of the cave a full five minutes before Bruce gets himself free.


End file.
